Jean Baptiste Casmiere Breschard - Gilbert Stuart Portrait

Gilbert Stuart Portrait

In 1878 a portrait by Gilbert Stuart was identified by George Washington Riggs, (also known as "The President's Banker"), a trustee of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., as "Breschard, the Circus Rider", and as "Breschard" the painting was displayed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1880. The portrait currently resides at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., but is now identified by the NGA as being John Bill Ricketts, another circus performer.

Stuart and Ricketts did not sail from Dublin to Philadelphia together as some have claimed. Owing to Stuart's aversion to being cooped up for weeks with a circus, he booked passage on another ship, the Draper, even though its destination was a different American port.

Peter Grain, a former member of the Circus of Pépin and Breschard, is cited in the NGA provenance for this painting as being the owner in the mid-19th century. After Grain, the portrait was owned by picture dealer Henry Barlow, who sold it to Riggs sometime before 1867. In that year, Henry T. Tuckerman's Book of the Artists: American Artist Life Comprising Biographical and Critical Sketches of American Arts listed the painting, sitter unidentified, as being in Riggs' collection. In 1944 it was displayed at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, as "William Rickhart", and by 1947 the National Gallery of Art had changed the identification to "John Bill Ricketts".